Eyes and hands in the deep dea

The Remotely Operated Vehicle ROV KIEL 6000 on the Expedition ECORESPONSE in the CCZ

Where shall I start? Let me give you an overview of the technology which is used onboard the RV SONNE during our cruise SO 239 in the East Pacific. And here it may be suitable to start with the ‘platform’, the ship. We are sailing onboard the new SONNE. Just to remember: following the planning phase, the first steel plate for constructing the new vessel was cut in November 2013 on the Meyer Shipyard in Papenburg/Germany. In July 2014, the ship was already baptized and in November 2014 delivered to her new owner, the Federal Republic of Germany. This sounds like a record especially when considering that our cruise is the third scientific leg since leaving the port of Kiel on December, 2nd last year. Although the crew is still organizing storage of spares, the working atmosphere onboard is very good and the cooperation is absolutely professional, successful and friendly. So it is a good opportunity to say thank you to everybody involved - for sure there is no comparison to other large-scale projects in Germany but a nice example for good German Engineering!

Besides the new ship, what other technical tools are used during the cruise? Some of the gear may have been described in other blogs, for instance the gravity corer, the multiple corer (MUC) or the box corer. They all are standard tools in marine science.Additionally, we sail with an AUV, an autonomous underwater vehicle, which is capable of diving to a maximum water depth of 6000 m and provides high resolution maps and photos of the seafloor

The “eyes and hands” are carried down to the deep seafloor by our remotely operated vehicle ROV KIEL 6000. The robot, we call it the vehicle, is supplied with power through a cable which also contains glass fibers which manage the data transfer for the vehicle control and cameras. The cable is only used as an umbilical, i.e. the vehicle dives up to 6 kilometers down and up actively by means of its own electrically driven motors. The vehicle carries a variety of cameras from black and white cameras for vehicle control to two HD-cameras for visual seafloor observation and photographing. The vehicle also contains a CTD probe and may carry more scientific equipment depending on the mission. This equipment may even be supplied with power and can send data online to the scientists.

Our main task during the present cruise is to collect sedimentological and geochemical samples and, most important, to record as many observations of the fauna at the seafloor as possible. A choice of it is also collected; sometimes they are only a few centimeters in size.

How does that work? With the cameras mainly the HD cameras, we scan the seafloor and upon request of our scientists we ‘land’ the ROV in front of an interesting object. After an extensive documentation with both photo and video cameras, the object is collected using the manipulator. The objects are collected into a sample box which allows save transport to the sea surface and aboard the ship. This sound pretty simple but the technology involved is tricky. Just imagine: you are on top of a mountain, approximately 5000 m high and at the base of this mountain you want to remotely take a soft drink and a cookie out of the refrigerator.

Up to now we conducted 12 dives reaching a maximum water depth of 5030 m. The ROV team consists of engineers, technicians and scientists who, besides maintenance, repair and improvements also work as pilots. Two pilots work together with two scientists in the control container and ‘fly’ the ROV through the water. They are flooded with information from the vehicle itself, the cable, the ship and fulfill the job asked for by the scientists.Until now, fingers crossed, no major faults occurred, thus we optimistically look forward to the last two to three dives.